In the days since she’d returned from Las Vegas, she spent little or no time thinking about her ex-fiancé and just about all of her waking hours wondering what and even who Eamon was doing. C’mon. Here was a man who owned a string of strip clubs, after all. Clearly anyone who was in Vegas was bound to lose their appreciation for clothing as well as their common sense. That was the latest excuse she told herself to explain her behavior in Sin City.
Hours after she had landed in New York with her twin cousins in tow grinning like Cheshire cats, she was actually starting to think that there was something seriously wrong with her. But after researching her symptoms on the web and practically every women’s magazine she could find, she concluded that her body was just suffering from sexual withdrawal. It was silly, she knew, but she found several articles to support her theory. Now after two weeks of daydreaming and night-dreaming about the things Eamon had done to her body, she was either going to have to enroll in masturbation rehab or some frequent-flyer program so that she could get a weekly or monthly fix in Las Vegas. And that largely depended on whether Eamon wanted anything to do with her again, given how she’d treated him the last time.
There was a third option, Victoria decided. She could try to exercise Eamon out of her system. This was also the most logical solution. So she signed up for a five-thirty a.m. boot camp–like training session that she’d taken before and worked out with such a vengeance that it even stunned her trainer. After kick squats, front and reverse lunges and side-plank hip lifts, she ended each class looking like a sweaty mess.
A few of the regulars gave her odd looks, surprised at how much her endurance had increased.
“I like that hustle,” her trainer praised as she headed toward the showers.
Victoria smiled. But the truth was, she still had enough energy to do another four-mile run. Maybe her plan to exercise Eamon out of her system wasn’t working. On Friday of the second post-Vegas week, she caught sight of a group of women headed toward the workout rooms. It was probably their clothes that caught her attention. They seemed a little more flirty-slash-risqué than the usual gray-sweats types that hung around this particular gym.
It was her curiosity that made her backtrack and then follow the women to their class. To her surprise the workout room was equipped with a dozen silver poles. In front of the class was this cute, perky Dominican woman with a head full of micro-braids and a booty so thick she could put Nicki Minaj to shame.
“Ah. We have a new member with us today.” The woman beamed and then rushed over to Victoria.
“Oh, no,” Victoria said, shaking her head. “I just want to watch, to check it out. I’ve already worked out this morning.”
“Awww. Are you sure?” she asked, cocking her head and dramatically curling her lips downward. “We would love to have you. Wouldn’t we, ladies?”
The small eight-woman group readily agreed.
“Maybe next time. I just want to see what you ladies do in the class. Can I just watch?”
“Why, sure, you can.” She thrust out her hand. “By the way, I’m Carmelina. I used to be a professional dancer. I still work out at Sapphire in New York part-time and before that at The Dollhouse in Atlanta.”
Victoria’s ears perked up. “You used to work at The Dollhouse?”
Her eyes widened. “Yeah. Truth be known, that was one of my best gigs before me and my husband moved out here. The King brothers were the best. Oh! I better get this class started. Welcome and I hope you eventually decide to join us.” With that, she turned and headed back to the front of the class.
Victoria slowly stepped back to a corner of the room and watched.
Carmelina punched a few buttons and the room suddenly came alive with a few hard-hitting hip-hop beats. The women immediately launched into warm-up exercises.
Fifteen minutes later, Victoria was bored and was ready to head out, but that was exactly when things started to get more interesting. Though she kept a straight face, she was intrigued by the teasing and suggestive moves.
“Pace yourselves, ladies,” Carmelina shouted. “Slow and easy. The keys to seduction are slow and graceful moves.”
Victoria paid close attention to how the women exaggerated every move. As if on cue, the women reached for the poles, slowly dancing around it at first then leaning and stretching their legs up. They each performed one basic swing, followed by a few complicated twirls.
“Okay, ladies. Let’s do the slap and tickle,” the instructor yelled. “Turn your back to your man. Keep your legs straight and then sloooowly bend forward, look back, smile innocently and then stroke and lightly tap your bottom.”
It was clear that all the girls were enjoying themselves while Victoria was taking notes. They went back to swinging around the pole, easily holding their body weight while upside down with their legs in a full split.
Victoria was sold and anxious to try out the moves. Until she had been to The Dollhouse, she had never given much thought to the athleticism required for the profession. The muscle control alone fascinated her. Seeing firsthand what was involved in the dance, she didn’t understand why it wasn’t an Olympic sport.
Her practiced stoicism melted away as her rapt attention caught Carmelina’s eye. “Are you sure that you wouldn’t like to give this a try? It’s a lot of fun!” Just then, Carmelina flipped her body up, supporting herself with just the strength of her calves.
Victoria remembered the move from one of the dancers in Eamon’s club. “All right,” she said and walked toward a vacant pole. “I’ll try it.”
The other women paused to give her a round of applause.
Despite her sudden wave of shyness, her competitive nature wouldn’t let her change her mind.
“Have you had any experience working with a stripper pole?” Carmelina asked in her the same chipper voice.
Victoria shook her head.
“Don’t worry, we’ll all work together to get you up to speed.”
Forty-five minutes later, Victoria was sore in places only her gynecologist should know about. Strangely enough, she was invigorated by the end of the class and promised herself, as well as the group, that she was now their newest member.
Victoria kept her weekly Monday lunch with her cousins at The Garden in the Four Seasons Hotel. Dressed to the nines in a sea-green Prada dress and silver Christian Louboutins, she followed the hostess as she navigated around the marble floor and acacia trees to her usual table. To her surprise, her cousins had actually beaten her there. That had to be some kind of miracle. Her cousins were always late.
“Hello, girls.” Victoria smiled and then took a few seconds to exchange their customary kisses on both cheeks. “I can’t believe you two are already here.”
“Three weeks without our Monday red snapper should be a crime,” Grace said.
Victoria smiled.
“Are you okay?” Iris said. “We noticed that you were walking a little funny when you came in.”
“Oh. It’s nothing. I enrolled in a new class at the gym that’s kicking my butt.”
The girls nodded and then looked at each other.
“Sooooo,” Grace started. “When are we going to talk about him?”
“Oh, God,” Victoria moaned. “Please don’t ruin my lunch before I even get a chance to taste it. If I never hear the name Marcus Henderson again, it will be too soon.”
The twins shared another look and Victoria caught the exchange over the edge of her menu. “Enough. Spit it out.”
“Well,” Iris said. “We weren’t talking about Marcus.”
Victoria settled back in her chair. “Oh.” She supposed that two weeks was a pretty good record.
Grace leaned in over the table. “Yes. ‘Oh.’ We’ve been dying to hear about the naked strip club owner you had holed up in your hotel suite.”
“Yes. The sexy-as-hell Eamon King.”
“What? You two hired a private investigator?”
“Please. There’s this wonderful thing called Google.�
� Iris smiled. “So give up the deets. How long have you two been doing the nasty?”
“The nasty?”
“I’m trying to keep it PC. Now stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling.” Victoria tried to play it cool. “There’s nothing to get worked up about. There’s nothing to tell.”
“Yeah. Right. And for future reference, there’s no need to lie to us. You just wanted to spend the night alone.” Grace rolled her eyes. “You must’ve thought you really pulled one over on us. We’re not oblivious to the need for an emergency booty call. Hell, I make them at least once a month.”
“Once a month?” Iris said. “Please, you’re in the minor leagues. I rotate some creepers on a weekly basis.”
“Creepers?”
“Yeah. You know. Men you never introduce to your friends. You just creep around with under the cover of night. The booty-call role.”
The twins giggled.
“Eamon was not a booty call.”
The look her cousins gave her all but said sell your BS somewhere else.
“Look. Not everything is what it looks like.”
“Well,” Grace said. “It looked like you had a naked man in your suite. The same man I caught you trying to have relations with in the office of his strip club.”
“Relations?”
“PC. Remember?”
“Yeah. Well. It’s not a strip club, either. It’s a gentlemen’s club.”
“You say tomato and I say tomahto,” Grace challenged. “And you’re still dodging, by the way. So come out with it.”
The two leaned forward together and planted their elbows onto the table.
“I told you there’re no deets. It’s nothing.”
“Did you sleep with him or not?” Iris asked.
The direct question made it impossible for Victoria to continue dancing around the truth. “A little bit.”
Her cousins screamed.
Shocked, Victoria leaped over the table and slapped her hands over their mouths. “Have you two lost your minds? Look where you are.”
The twins still wiggled in their chairs and stamped their feet.
“I can’t believe you two are acting like children.” She kept her hand over their mouths until she was sure that they were going to behave.
“Actually, we’ve been talking, and we think that it’s great that you’ve finally let your hair down. It’s waaaay past time for you to let go of some of that control.”
Victoria frowned. “You two have been talking?”
“Well, it’s just that you’re always sooooo…”
“I’m always so what?”
“Honesty?” Iris said, timidly.
She definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “Please.”
“Well…” She looked over at her mirror image. “You’re always so…stuck-up.”
The statement hung over the table.
“Sorry,” Iris finally added. “We love you though.”
Victoria struggled not to let her shock and irritation show on her face. “I resent that.”
“Resent it all you want,” Grace said, less tactfully. “You just can’t deny it.”
This whole sexual-intervention-slash-tough-love therapy was starting to work Victoria’s last nerve, but clearly her cousins weren’t finished.
“C’mon. You have to know that you’re a control freak, right?” Grace said. “Everything has its place. Every person fits neatly in a certain column. There’s only black and white—no shades of gray. And while I’m on this honesty tear, you chose Marcus to be your husband before you asked him out on a date.”
“That’s true,” Iris co-signed.
“And that was after one of your famous spreadsheet analyses of his character, his financial upside potential, a credit check and a criminal background check. Poor Marcus didn’t stand a chance. He probably just choked.”
Heat flushed Victoria’s face. “Poor Marcus? You’re taking his side after what he’s done to me? Is that what I’m hearing?”
Finally Grace held up her hands and conceded. “All right, maybe that was a poor choice of words—but my point remains the same. I actually love the idea of you easing off the brakes a bit. You’re a successful investment banker in your own right. You balance an insanely cluttered social life with charities and supporting the arts. Now it’s time for you to focus on your personal life. But you need someone who’s going to help loosen you up.”
“Yeah. And Marcus wasn’t it,” Iris testified.
“Definitely. Now, take someone like Eamon King…”
“Wow,” Iris said. “Now, there was some serious heat being generated between the two of you. Big time.”
“Me and Eamon?”
The twins nodded.
Victoria wanted to dismiss their observations…but couldn’t. “Anyway. Eamon is all wrong.”
“Why, because he owns a string of strip clubs?” Iris challenged.
“No. And they’re gentlemen’s clubs,” she reminded them again. “Plus he owns a couple of restaurants.”
Grace frowned. “Please tell me that you haven’t started another one of those damn spreadsheets.”
Victoria refused to answer.
“Good Lord.” Grace rolled her eyes. “Somebody save us from Microsoft Excel.”
“Will you just forget about it? There is no Eamon and me. We’re not a couple and we will never be a couple. So forget about it and let’s move on.” She reached for her glass of water.
“Does moving on mean that you’re also going to drop that silly lawsuit?”
Victoria choked and then put her glass back down. “Now it’s a silly lawsuit, too?”
Grace removed her elbows from the table just as the waitress arrived with their lunch. “C’mon, Victoria. It was always a silly lawsuit. Do you know how bottlenecked the courts would be if every woman started hurling lawsuits at strip clubs across America?”
“The judicial system would shut down. We could never get around to prosecuting murderers and rapists.”
“Now you’re just being silly. There’s a difference between civil court and criminal court, you know.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I watch Law & Order. Let’s not get off the message. You just filed that lawsuit because you were angry. I get it.”
“And I’m still angry and I’m pushing forward. End of story!”
“You’re going to sue the man that you just had a fling with?”
“One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”
“Wow,” Grace said. “You really are a hardass.”
Iris shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe she has a point not wanting to settle down with strip-club owner. That’s an awful lot of temptation to have around you.”
Grace turned toward her sister. “It doesn’t have to be a serious relationship.”
Are they really going to have this conversation like I’m not still sitting at the table?
“I thought that we were just talking booty calls?” Grace said. “I’m not saying that she should introduce someone that’s just a step above being a pimp into New York society. That would be a nightmare. Can you imagine the headline? The Heiress and The Pimp.”
Yep. They’re going to just keep talking. “Eamon is not a pimp.”
“Yes. Yes. We know. He also runs a restaurant.”
Victoria’s head started to hurt. “You know what? I have to cut this short.”
Grace and Iris turned. “Aww. C’mon.”
“Don’t be mad,” Iris said. “We’re just trying to help.”
“I’m not mad,” Victoria lied. “I just really have to go. I forgot I had this…other thing I have to do.”
It was a bad lie and they all knew it.
Slowly the girls rose from their seats. The twins regretted that they may have hurt Victoria’s feelings.
“All right,” Iris conceded. “We’re going to meet here next Monday, right?”
“That depends on whether we’ve moved onto a new subject,” she
tried to joke, but with a veiled warning. They kissed each other’s cheeks again after which Victoria high-tailed it out of the restaurant as fast as her legs would allow.
Outside, she hopped into a cab and gave the driver her address. Alone in the backseat, her mind rehashed the ridiculous scene at the restaurant. She couldn’t believe how her cousins had ganged up on her like that. Her personal sex life was none of their business.
“A booty call.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ma’am?” the driver asked.
“Oh. Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”
The driver nodded but gave her a strange look. Great. Now people think I’m going crazy.
For the next ten minutes, she just stared out of the window at the traffic while her cab inched along bumper-to-bumper.
Booty call. This time, she didn’t roll her eyes. It would be kind of funny…and cool, if she just periodically picked up the phone and told Eamon that she wanted or needed to be serviced. Then again, who’s to say that he wasn’t already on someone else’s short list?
She shook her head, but the term booty call was rooted in her mind like a California redwood.
“Ma’am?”
Victoria jerked out of reverie. “Huh?”
“We’re here.”
Victoria glanced out of the window of the cab to see that they had indeed arrived at The Centurion. “Thanks.” She handed the driver his fare and climbed out. She flashed the doorman a smile and entered the softly lit, cream-colored lobby. As she headed toward the elevator, she saw the concierge point his white-gloved hand in her direction a second before a young man raced over to her.
“Uh, Ms. Gregory?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“I have something for you,” he said, thrusting a thick envelope toward her.
“What’s this?”
“You’ve been served.”
“I’m what?”
“Have a nice day.” He saluted her and then ran off.
Openmouthed, Victoria stood there like an idiot for a second and then quickly tore open the envelope. When her eyes raced over the documents, a lump of incredulity clogged her throat. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That jerk is counter-suing me?”
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